Screw vs. purpleheart wood - GIF

[Altair]

Screw vs. purpleheart wood.




Previously:

Splinter extraction - GIF
Screw head cap - GIF
Driving a long screw - GIF
Correct way to drive a screw - GIF
Making, polishing, and bluing screws - video

[Frank S]

I've had brand name screws do that even in white pine but rubbing them in a bar of soap will help also going to a slightly larger pilot hole for hard heart wood is a must

[owen moore]

I knew an old cabinet maker years ago that was making some small intricate parts for a grandfathers clock. He would always rub a small screw or a nail across his nose before he would drive or hammer it. I asked him about it and he said it put just enough oil on it to keep the wood from splitting and the screws would drive easier. I like soap better.

[Philip Davies]

I knew an old cabinet maker years ago that was making some small intricate parts for a grandfathers clock. He would always rub a small screw or a nail across his nose before he would drive or hammer it. I asked him about it and he said it put just enough oil on it to keep the wood from splitting and the screws would drive easier. I like soap better.

No soap on my nose!

[mklotz]

My Dad and I had multi-section bamboo fly rods. If they hadn't been used for a while, pushing the brass ends into the brass ferrules was often difficult. My Dad showed me the trick of rubbing the end along the side of the nose to pick up a coating of what he referred to as "face fat". Worked a proper treat.

[Toolmaker51]

The film some of us have on our face can produce a very thin lubricant. All us old toolmakers know this, I've remedied many a sticky travel indicator in just this way.
Nose kidding.
But enough to build a cabinet? IDK.
In November, I fixed 25-30 deck screw heads that were exposed in my box truck floor, 1997 apatong. My go-to for some time has been vegetable oil. Corn, olive whatever, they all work. Vegetable oil is absorbed without ill effect. Petroleum based products are detrimental in wood.
Some of you familiar with firearms, especially box-locks (ie sxs shotguns) have seen rotted spongy wood where it abuts the action. Generally speaking, purchased by less affluent shooters who had limited resources just used WD-40 type lubes to excess. It pools inside and runs back through all the in-letting.
Sidelocks, usully had better lives, never inspected one with that issue.
Over-oiling evidence appears in handguns as well, double actions maybe more often than single actions.

[mwmkravchenko]

Ok Cabinetmaker for over 30 years.

Cheap screw.
And possibly a setup. The hole is large enough for proper root clearance. And Purple heart is not that hard.
I set tens of thousands of screws and if I count houses where we screwed down the entire floor Plus decks I used to build pretty near a hundred thousand screws. This doesn't happen when you know what you are doing.

Soap is not magic nor is nose oil. You want better screws get a self tapping type with a cut tip. Or bite the bullet and pre-drill in harder wood types. There are hard soft woods ( Trees with needles are softwoods ) and there are soft soft woods. Balsa is actually a hardwood. It has leaves. That's the broad classification of a hardwood. The tree has leaves.